FNC Boaster: “I’d Love to Take on Any Team That Has Beaten Us in the Past”

The World Championship for Valorant esports – Valorant Champions 2022 – is kicking off today on 31st August with the Group A opening matches. This is the second iteration of the tournament and it is going to feature a live crowd at the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul, Turkey. In the first set of matches, Paper Rex and EDward Gaming, and Leviatán and Team Liquid are going head-to-head to begin shaping up the groups. Notably, the teams will be playing on the recently introduced Valorant map Pearl. Fnatic’s Valorant team is one of the strongest teams in the esports scene currently but it has failed to pick up a major win in Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Masters events.

Ahead of the Valorant Champions 2022, AFK Gaming asked Fnatic’s star player Jake “Boaster” Howlett about the dark horse of the tournament and which team he was looking forward to taking on the most at the pre-event press conference on 30th August.

Boaster on which team he wants to face in Valorant Champions

Boaster is the in-game leader (IGL) for Fnatic and is a star in the Valorant community. He is known for his dance moves and his timely jokes. AFK Gaming posed the question of who Boaster thought the dark horse of the competition is and asked him which team he was excited to play against.

Boaster acknowledged that most people might call EDward Gaming (EDG) the dark horse but believed that there are no dark horses since every team deserved to be there at the tournament. However, he noted that EDG was a good team and that he’s watched them play.

Talking about facing teams at Valorant Champions 2022, Boaster said, “I’d love to take on any team that has beaten us in the past.” He also added that he’d love to play against the North American (NA) team OpTic Gaming. “Obviously, it’d be fun to play against OpTic for once since we keep dodging each other. I want El Diablo vs El Derke. I think that would be pretty fun.”

In the Valorant community, OpTic’s Jacob “yay” Whitaker is nicknamed El Diablo and Boaster joked about witnessing the yay vs Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev matchup soon.

Valorant Champions: Fnatic’s group and upcoming matches

Fnatic has been placed in Group D alongside the likes of DRX, 100 Thieves (100T) and Furia (FUR). Fnatic will take on 100T in the Group D opener on 2nd September at 5 pm CEST.

The starting roster of Fnatic is as follows:

• Jake “Boaster” Howlett (IGL)

• James “Mistic” Orfila

• Nikita “Derke” Sirmitev

• Enzo “Enzo” Mestari

• Emir “Alfajer” Ali Beder

Both Fnatic and OpTic Gaming have to make it out of their respective groups if they want to face each other in the Playoffs bracket of Valorant Champions 2022. Click here to read more about Valorant Champions 2022 and to follow the scores and updates from the tournament.